


Five Times Sam Felt Like Part of the Family

by fuckener



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckener/pseuds/fuckener
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, five times Finn noticed something more between Sam and Kurt and didn't say anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Sam Felt Like Part of the Family

**1.** Every Sunday night, Sam will show up with his dad’s suitcase and a bouquet of flowers he likes to insist his mom made him bring, despite the tag from the florist just down the road that’s always stuck to them. He knocks first before coming inside, even by the fourth week, when his dinner is already waiting in the set microwave and the roses from last Sunday have already been taken away to leave an empty vase for him to fill again.  
  
Finn is sick this time. In fact, everyone is sick - since Friday night when his family seemed to suffer the first, collective headache to now, when the air in the house feels thick and _gross_ with the smell of vapour rubs and green tea that don’t seem to be helping any. Kurt has retreated into his room and the only way Finn can be sure he’s still up there is the sparse, powerful sneezing fits he’s prone to and Burt’s been asleep in his bed for the past two days from what Finn knows, so when Sam walks into the living room tonight all he finds is Finn and his mom, sprawled over the couches in the homely blankets Kurt tries his best to get rid of without her noticing when he can, the two of them glazed over at infomercials on the television and surrounded by scrunched up, _gross_ tissues.  
  
“Uh,” is how Sam greets them, a bouquet of lillies dangling uselessly at his side. “Are you guys, like, breathing?”  
  
His mom is completely unresponsive. Finn sniffs. “Trying to,” he answers, his voice almost too nasal to be understood. He tips his head up to look at Sam properly through his glassy eyes and Sam blinks at him, an eyebrow quirked.  
  
“You’re sick,” he states, kind of dumbly.  
  
Finn shakes his head and tries his best to sit up. “No. _Dying._ ”  
  
Even though he wants to stand up and have a full comprehensible conversation with Sam, the thought of the effort it would take alone wears him out, and before he knows it he’s dropped back onto the damp couch cushions and his eyes are closed again. “ _Gross_ ,” he mumbles to himself, and it sounds far-off and distant and no way is he getting any sleep with the light glaring onto his eyelids like this.  
  
He feels the blankets across him being lifted from his waist back up to his shoulders and tucking in just a bit. He opens his eyes enough to see Sam over him with the arms of his shirt rolled up, smiling a funny half-smile back down at him before he stoops over to pick up the carpet of tissues he and his mom have made. Finn’s eyes keep flickering open and shut afterwards, and distantly, he watches Sam put all the tissues into the trash and hand his mom a glass of water she takes with limp hands, turn off the suddenly obnoxiously loud television and obnoxiously bright lights, and place the new bouquet of flowers into the vase on the windowsill before he picks up his suitcase and goes upstairs to the guest room as quietly as anyone could.  
  
“Thanks,” Finn mutters when he’s gone.  
  


-

Sam’s the one who gets Burt to leave his room that night. Sam’s the one who makes Finn supper - just one of those heatable cups of noodles, but still - Sam’s the one who drives out in the middle of the night to get more Tylenol for Carole, and Sam’s the one who leaves mugs of hot milk at Kurt’s door every hour or so, making sure to ask for Finn’s instructions so he can get it just right.

“You should go lock yourself in the guest room, Sam,” Carole tells him later, when Sam is watching old football matches next to Burt and Finn on the television. She rubs a hand over her face. “You don’t want to get this.”

With a shrug, Sam grins lopsidedly at her, the very same grin Finn uses to disarm his mom’s arguments. “I think I already had it,” is his excuse, but since there’s only been a two day gap since Sam was last here nobody really buys it but nobody has the heart or the strength to insist he go to bed, either, even if he’s looking pretty tired already.

Sam’s the one who sits down there with Finn long, long after his parents have went to bed to watch old cartoons even though he has school in the morning - only him, since even Kurt has resigned himself into not leaving the house tomorrow. By now, Sam looks exhausted from the drive and all the fussing he’s been doing today. “You should get some sleep, man,” Finn lazily insists at eleven o clock, nudging Sam with his elbow, but Sam only blinks himself awake again and smiles, tiredly.

There’s a pause afterwards. Sam pulls on the drawstrings of his hoodie, thoughtfully. “Is Kurt okay? I haven’t seen him like, once since I got here.”

Finn bats a hand, dismissively. “He doesn’t want people to see him when he’s sick. Especially with a guest around, I guess.” He wipes his nose on his hand and drops it back to his side. He makes a mental note to do something nice for Sam for all this. Something that isn’t sung this time, maybe.

On cue, Kurt shuffles into the room, wrapped up from head to toe in his bedsheets. He sets himself down on the empty couch beside them, letting out a soft sigh. Finn likes seeing Kurt when he’s sick: it’s a funny kind of weird, and his hair is always a total mess and his face is flushed. It all makes him look like the little boy from all the photo-albums in the attic again. This time isn’t any different.

“Hi, Sam,” Kurt greets after a moment, his eyes half-lidded in a half-conscious way. One side of his mouth quirks up. “Thanks for all the milk.”

Sam grins at him, brightly, straightening. “Hi, Kurt.” He scoots further off his cushion, away from Finn and closer to Kurt to tell him, “You’re welcome.” Then he leans over and presses his palm against Kurt’s forehead, his big hand spreading over into his hair and brushing the long fringe of Kurt’s eyelashes. Finn feels like it lingers there a while longer than it takes his normally mom to check his temperature, but generally today Finn feels like time is passing way too slowly.

“You’re bit warm, though,” Sam adds after another moment, quietly, staring at Kurt in concern. “I’ll get you some water.” He takes his hand away, smiling, and walks into the kitchen.

When Finn looks at him, Kurt’s face is a  _luminous_ red. It looks like it could set fire to his bedsheets. It looks like it’s probably painful.

He snorts and Kurt gives him a dirty, indignant look, telling him sharply, “It’s the _fever._ ”

-

**2.** Sam and Mercedes date for just under a month. It’s kept quiet, like before, just like the break-up is. If Finn wasn’t living in the same house as him for twenty-two days out of the month he’s pretty sure wouldn’t even have noticed them getting together at all. Sam’s always been good at hiding things away, though, always - if he’s upset about the break-up, no matter how many times Finn and Kurt ask him he won’t say it or let his smile slip an inch.

Since he’s single, and their kids are both already in stable (enough) relationships, Burt and Carole set him up with one of the younger nurses Carole works with at the hospital, and Sam awkwardly waves them off until Carole sets a date for it and Sam, being Sam, doesn’t refuse in case it offends her. Finn doesn’t know why he doesn’t want to go - Carole shows them both a picture of the girl and she’s _hot_ , and she’s in a nurse’s uniform for a living, for God’s sake.

Kurt takes it upon himself to get Sam ready for his date, surprising no-one. Sam has to pack away all his nicest clothes along with everything else he normally takes to stay with them - which is already a lot, honestly - and Kurt lays them all out on the guest bed and makes faces at them for about an hour while Sam stands looking into the mirror of the guest room, looking weirdly morose when he isn’t sending them both anxious, furtive glances. Finn likes to be helpful, so he stays there for moral support, and watches Sam gradually become more and more quiet and tight-lipped, watching Kurt fuss over his outfit for his date with sad eyes.

Kurt sees it, too. He heaves a great, pretend sigh and arranges an outfit out of all the clothes strewn haphazardly over the guest bed - black jeans and a navy t-shirt, a combination Finn really doesn’t think should take over ten minutes to put together. He folds the rest of Sam’s clothes again, carefully placing them back in the suitcase Sam always mindlessly leaves open to reveal all his underwear and comic-books to anyone in the house with eyes. Nobody in the house judges Sam for anything. He isn’t just a house-guest, he isn’t just the friend who stays over; he’s kind of a big deal at their house, to all of them.

Sam bites his lip and fumbles with the hem of the top Kurt’s picked out, and Kurt and Finn both see it, all of it. Kurt hums, knelt over Sam’s suitcase still, before asking without looking up, “Finn, could you go get your black belt?”

“But you hate -” Finn starts, but Kurt glares at him out of the corner of his eyes and Finn stands up, obligingly, says, “Oh, yeah, totally,” and then leaves. Someone shuts the door behind him and he hears the lock turning, which - is weird.

It takes ten minutes or so to locate the only belt he owns in the messy bombshelter that is his room - in his cupboard, under his schoolbag and next to the tie Rachel bought him for meeting her parents that Kurt cast off as being ‘so heinous it was a sin.’ When he goes back to the guest room door, clutching it uselessly, he can hear Sam and Kurt talking inside, in soft voices Finn only makes out when he presses his ear to the door. Kurt is telling Sam _it’s okay it’s okay_ and it almost sounds like Sam is crying, which is how Finn knows he’s hearing them all wrong, shakes his head at himself and leaves them to do whatever they’re doing while he watches football downstairs with Burt and Carole.

“I hope Kurt isn’t driving the kid crazy,” Burt comments, looking up at the room above them then checking his watch.

Carole makes a little sound. “He _is_ taking a while.”

Finn doesn’t really know what’s going on upstairs so he decides not to say anything, and it’s quiet for about fifteen more minutes when Burt pauses the television, looking oddly concerned, and declares that he’s going to see what the hell’s going on up there the very moment Kurt steps inside, looking oddly quiet and solemn.

“Dad,” he says, and his voice is soft. He presses his lips together before continuing. “Could you go talk to Sam for a minute?”

Burt stares at him. Finn blinks and watches him leave the room, and then Kurt stiffly perches beside him, his eyes wide and blank, looking like he doesn’t know what to do which is a first for Finn to see, ever. Finn bumps him with his knee, his brow furrowed.

“Everything okay?” Carole asks after another moment.

Kurt blinks himself out of his daze and turns to her with a smile. “Fine.” He fidgets with his jeans, smoothing his hands over them, back and forth. “You should call that girl. I don’t think Sam’s going to make it tonight.”

There’s a pause where Carole absorbs this and then she leaves to use the phone in the kitchen, and it’s just Finn and Kurt and a paused football game and this creepy, heavy atmosphere Finn doesn’t know what to do with at all.

He just can’t contain it anymore. It’s too weird. “So what the hell just happened?” he asks, dumbly, raising the black belt still in his hand as if to make a point.

Rolling his eyes, Kurt bats it out of his face. “Absolutely none of your business. And I _hate_ that belt,” he sighs.

-

When Finn sees Sam again, his eyes are all red and the hairstyle Kurt spent thirty minutes molding for him has had Sam’s fingers ran through it so many times it’s back to being a complete disaster. Finn knocks before going in, of course, but finding Sam hunched over on the guest bed gnawing on his bottom lip looking like kind of a state isn’t what he’d expected at all.

“Hey, man,” Finn says, quietly. Today is freaking him out.

Sam looks up at him and flashes him a brief, unconvincing smile. He digs his knuckles into his eye, quickly. “Hey.”

Finn taps restlessly on his knees. He sucks when Kurt and Rachel cry, and now it’s Sam - Sam is such a _guy_ , Sam is so good at hiding whatever he doesn’t want people to see. It’s awkward, even though Finn wishes he could help him so badly he’s kind of desperate. “Are you okay?” he asks, slowly. He puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder and when he looks at him this time he notices Sam’s suitcase, packed and stood up straight, read to go right next to the bed, and that makes him worry even more.

Sam shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he insists, then he notices what Finn’s staring at. He glances at the suitcase, too. “I’m going home tonight and uh, Burt’s gonna come. I have to talk to my parents.” His hands hang from his knees in tight fists for a moment, his breath comes out in a long sigh and Finn feels his whole body tense under his hand before he continues, softly. “About - stuff.”

Finn has no idea what’s going on at all. He kept asking Kurt about it earlier but Kurt wouldn’t reply with anything that wasn’t bitchy or snide, and he’d wanted to ask Burt but he’d looked so serious and _dad_ all of a sudden the idea alone seemed too stupid to consider. “Okay, dude,” is all he can say, and then he pats Sam on the back and sits with him like that until Burt calls him downstairs.

At the door, Sam hugs them all goodbye. He tells Carole not to worry about him but she will, and he insists to Finn that he’s fine again when Finn insists he isn’t. His eyes are still a scary shade of red but he’s smiling, and when he lets go of Kurt last of all he just tells him, “Thanks,” through a grin.

-

**3.** This year, two days before Christmas, the Evans family invite them to Kentucky for a meal. Sam’s dad and Burt are friends, and Finn knows his mom could get along with anybody which isn’t different for him, either, so they say yes, and Finn’s glad. Normally at their house Christmas is a constant high-pressure situation and Kurt and Carole cook angrily in the kitchen all day and wait angrily on praise after the food is put out and Finn really just likes eating and Sam’s kid siblings - he’s pretty excited.

Kurt seems kind of worked up about it, which is his normal Christmas protocol, really. He tries on about two dozen different winter outfits and tries to gauge some kind of feedback on them from Finn, who lies in his bed the whole time inwardly bemoaning the fact that it’s nine in the morning and being woken up for an impromptu fashion show feels like a combination of things that he isn’t slightly interested in. But the uncharacteristically nervous way Kurt fidgets in his doorway in his nice brown jumper - “ _Sienna_ ,” Kurt absent-mindedly bitches at him - and his shiniest shoes makes Finn continue letting him barge in, over and over. Seeing his brother look _anxious,_ ever, kind of freaks Finn out.

“Nice,” he tells him groggily, pulling his face away from his pillow. He rubs his bleary eyes and smiles at Kurt, the dopey smile Kurt always likes despite himself. “You look nice, man.”

Kurt smiles back down at him, surprised, and looks himself over again in the reflection of Finn’s TV. “I do, don’t I?” He runs his hands over his sweater, smoothing it out, then turns back to Finn, looking thoughtful. He hums. “I really should pick out your clothes too, shouldn’t I?”

Finn sighs and falls back into bed.

-

By the time they get to Sam’s, it’s below freezing temperatures and snowing a bit; and Finn’s forgotten to bring his coat. Kurt rolls his eyes and hands him his scarf, the kind that isn’t actually for keeping warm, and Finn spreads it over himself like a blanket which does end up making Kurt laugh a little, at least.

He falls asleep on Kurt’s shoulder and drools all over his nice jacket but what he _does_ see of Kentucky in the winter in some sleepy, heavy blinks looks lovely and white. His mom sings carols in the front seat and Finn hears her trying to coax Kurt to join in a few times but Kurt’s body feels too tense, and the way he tells her no is a little too quiet. It’s concerning.

“You really do look nice,” Finn assures him when they finally step out of the car, stuttering with the cold and holding a few bags of presents with shaky hands. Kurt bought Sam this big, weird poster of the guy from _Spiderman_ \- bulging muscles and severe jawlines and other things Finn isn’t sure about Sam wanting to slap onto his bedroom wall - and it keeps threatening to fall out of its bag.

Kurt looks up at him and raises an eyebrow, tutting. “I always look nice.” Then he spins Finn around on his feet and ushers him into the Evans’ home, tells him to wipe his feet and not think about Sam’s mom the way he _knows_ all the boys think about Sam’s mom.

The Evans’ are all ridiculously nice and _smiley_ , but Sam lights up at the sight of them, in this knitted jumper even Finn knows is ugly with this grin even Finn knows is a little overeager. He rushes to take all the things out of their hands and set them away, and then comes back and hugs them both twice.

“What an... interesting choice of jumper,” Kurt comments the second time Sam swoops down to wrap his arms around him, staring at the obnoxiously huge snowman across Sam’s chest. He’s smiling, though, and his cheeks are a funny shade of red from the cold.

Sam pulls away and laughs, brightly - Finn thinks it might have faltered half-way but he isn’t sure. Sam hangs Kurt’s coat up for him and says, “I hoped you’d like it.”

-

While they wait for dinner Sam’s dad sits with Burt in the living room and asks him about a good car to get Sam - _Sammy_ is the actual word he uses, and funnily enough, it’s the one Burt uses right back - and Finn plays with Stevie and Stacey’s Lego and tries to think of a subtle way to ask an nine year old little girl why she has a crush on his brother and not him.

Sam and Kurt go out for a walk when the snow stops. The minute they step out the door Finn sees his mom throw Burt one of her _looks_ \- the kind nobody else can decipher - but Sam just wants to show Kurt the theatre in town that’s done up like an old sixties cinema, so Finn doesn’t really get it, but doesn’t want to ask anything in front of the Evans kids and Sam’s dad - who’s like Burt in the sense that he’s a completely nice guy but still probably has the capacity to terrify the shit out of him if he ever wanted too, so he makes Finn a little on edge.

When he turns around to check, the two of them are talking much quieter and much more seriously and then Stevie is knocking the half-assed Lego brick dinosaur out of his hands with a tiny Millennium Falcon toy.

“Is it too cold for us to go out?” Stacey asks him, tilting her head. Finn looks down at whatever she’s trying to put together so he can offer some kind of praise but the only thing that comes to mind when he sees it is _what even is that_ so he looks away again, outside the window instead.

“It looks okay, I guess,” he says after a moment. He scratches his chin with the top of a tiny plastic yellow head. He nudges Stacey with his elbow, grinning. “We could go build an igloo when your brother gets back. I need to steal a coat first.”

Stacey nods with a familiar lopsided smile, and holds her mess up for their inspection. Her brother tells her it looks nice and then stage-whispers to Finn, “I don’t know either,” and Finn snorts and ruffles his hair - an imitation of Sam’s new style, just like it was two years ago.

It takes another twenty minutes for Kurt and Sam to come back, both shivering and oddly quiet in the foyer. Finn flies the tiny Millennium Falcon around Stevie’s head and hears Kurt telling Sam he’s going to check on the meal, then Sam answers him in a hurry, “Yeah, that’s - yeah, okay.”

His eyes are wide and and glazed over when he steps into the living room again, red-nosed and a little windblown. It takes a minute for Finn to even get his attention.

“Dude,” he repeats, and Sam blinks down at the three of them spread over the floor, surrounded by tiny, multicoloured bricks like he’s only just noticed them. Finn frowns at him before asking, carefully, “Is it cool if I borrow your jacket to go outside? We’re gonna try to build an igloo.”

Sam takes a minute absorbing this, and then nods and slips his coat off, handing it over to him. “Of course, yeah.” He plays idly with a long strand of Stacey’s hair before walking off to the empty seat on the couch. “It’s a bit icy out there guys, watch out.”

Sam’s coat isn’t actually much protection against the cold when they get outside. Finn’s teeth chatter and Stacey and Stevie start production on what will be a very easily collapsed igloo. They yell on Finn to come help out, but Finn’s hands are basically blocks of solid ice already. He rubs them together, breathes on them, then sticks them into Sam’s coat pockets.

He frowns. There’s something inside, a little crushed and jagged at parts. He takes it out with care and finds a sprig of mistletoe in his palm, looking fresh but torn in places, like Sam’s been making fists around it.

He stares at it for a moment then puts it back inside.

-

**4.** After Finn and Kurt graduate, Sam tells them he can stay with Artie instead for the year to give them less hassle but their entire family refuse the idea. It’s strange enough having Kurt gone, but without Sam in the summer its extra weird. The house feels empty and lonely and Finn likes having Sam there when he gets off work from the garage, because it’s just as easy to ask him to ditch studying and play _Call of Duty_ instead as it was last year, too.

He still misses Kurt. Sam does, too, and before school sometimes he still leaves out glasses of orange juice for he and Finn that sit there on the counter for hours until Finn wakes up and pours them away again. It’s odd, though, because out of all their old friends Sam is the one who asks him about Kurt the very least and knows what he’s doing in New York the most.

Finn assumes they stay in contact, which is why he feels significantly less guilty about not being the one who picks Kurt up from the airport for his short holiday in September. Burt and Carole are both working, too, and they insist it shouldn’t be Sam who has to drive all the way out to pick Kurt up in the morning, but Sam insists it should be right back.

“I already told him I would,” he says plainly at the dining table the night before, gesturing to his phone. “And I want to do it, really.”

Carole gives him a mothering, fond smile. Burt chews on his potatoes and stares at him, hard, for the rest of the meal, like Sam has some secret intentions about picking Kurt up from the airport nobody else is in on. It makes Finn feel nervous for him.

After dinner, Finn and Sam clean up the kitchen together. He knows Kurt used to do it with him, and a lot better, too, but it’s rude just to leave Sam in here to do it alone, even if Finn has literally no idea what to do half the time. “So, dude,” he starts, bumping Sam’s shoulder with his at the sink. He smiles as lewdly as he can. “How are the girls in Kentucky doing?”

Sam blinks at him and actually laughs outright. He stacks the clean plates away with this big, crooked grin, shaking his head. “You’re asking the wrong guy.”

Finn doesn’t know how Sam can go through highschool dating as little as he does. He’s still dating Rachel, really, despite the distance and the constant anxiety because even though he has the capacity to like other girls they’re always going to be just that - _other girls_ , and not Rachel. Even Kurt was dating Blaine until the end of his senior year, and he’s pretty sure Rachel’s mentioned a few guys dropping by the apartment, hanging off of Kurt’s arm since they got to New York.

They stand there in an odd silence for a moment, Finn handing Sam cutlery and plates to scrub clean until Sam clears his throat and glances at him sidelong, lips pressed together tightly. “There is someone, kind of,” he says carefully, staring deep, deep into the basin full of suds his hands are dipped in.

Finn breaks into a grin and does that bro-elbowing thing that he’s less able to control doing with all the time he and Puck are spending together this year. “I need a name,” he tells him, but Finn probably won’t know her at all unless it’s like Tina or Brittany or that Harmony girl Kurt and Rachel knew who transferred at the beginning of the year. Sam doesn’t talk about girls enough for Finn to get much of a clear idea.

“It’s, uh,” Sam starts, nervously. He stops cleaning the plate in his hand and takes a deep breath, turning to look Finn straight in the eye. “It’s Kurt.”

The glass in Finn’s hands shatters to pieces on the floor. Finn stares down at it.

“Oh,” he says.

-

Sam being gay makes a lot of weird sense when Finn thinks about it, which he does the whole of the next day, while he fixes a crack in some nice old lady’s windshield, while he repairs the engine in some bumbling teenager’s first car, and while he eats the lunch Sam made for him.

Sam liking Kurt makes weird sense, too. At the end of his last school-year Sam was having Kurt tutor him on every subject he was taking - even the ones Finn knew he was good at, like art and music - and they’d both wake up early in the mornings to make big breakfasts together. Fry-ups, because they reminded Sam of home, and soy-meat, because the alternative would have doubtlessly _killed_ Kurt’s dad. The day after graduation, Sam had stayed an extra night when Kurt started freaking out about leaving, and his family and the house and his everything, basically. “I’m always only like, four hours down the road,” he’d said. Finn had watched the funny, fluttery way Kurt laughed and it made the weirdest sense.

They’d be good together, Finn thinks, even though thinking about it still hurts his brain.

He’s happy Sam gets to be the one who picks Kurt up from the airport. He’s happy about it most of the day, actually, until he gets home and walks into the living room to find Sam and his step-brother and some guy his step-brother’s brought home with him.

Kurt kisses his cheek and introduces him to Guy - like literally that is his name, just _Guy_ ; Sam is a much better name than that, why doesn't Kurt realize? He missed Kurt and he’s glad he’s home, and he’s glad he’s wearing that big, shiny smile he only wears when he really means it, but the awkward way Sam shuffles from foot to foot at the back of the room kind of breaks Finn’s heart at the same time.

“Nice to meet you,” Finn tells Guy, and he shakes his hand, smiling. He stands there in the living room doorway and talks to Kurt’s new boyfriend about Rachel, and how she’s doing, and how funny it is that her boyfriend’s so big. Guy is nice, but the way Sam manages to talk to Kurt on the other side of the room with his great big smile even after Kurt’s lips press against his cheek - like they just did to his brother's - Finn thinks that’s much, much nicer.

-

**5.** Kurt drops in during the summer, a week or two before Sam’s graduation. Finn picks him up from the airport this time, alone. They don’t talk about why Kurt broke up with his last boyfriend: Rachel couldn’t seem to give him any answers about why he did - other than, “He was _perfect_ , Finn, just like Blaine was - I don’t even know how Kurt’s taste in men could _possibly_ be this bad” - but Finn has his own sneaking suspicions about it, anyway, ones that aren’t right for him to bring up right now either.

“New York was being _dull_ ,” is Kurt’s excuse for the visit when they pack all his things into the back of the car. Finn gives him a look and closes the trunk over, nodding wordlessly.

He only told Finn he was visiting, so it’s a surprise to the house that he’s showing up - another inch taller, brighter from the lights in New York and happier, too. He talks during the whole car-ride home about all this stuff and all these people Finn doesn’t know, but they don’t talk about Rachel, because Finn’s still saving up money to surprise her with a visit on her birthday and he still doesn’t know if he’s going to make it in time: it’s starting to make his heart hurt.

The boys in New York are flashier than him. They probably sing better than he could in highschool.

  
When Finn gets noticeably quiet thinking about this, Kurt squeezes his arm, comfortingly. “She loves you a lot,” he says, voice soft and reassuring. His hand pulls away and he falls into a small, thoughtful silence of his own. “That’s the funny thing about some people. I think once they start being in love they just can’t stop.”  
  
That makes Finn smile, again. After another moments pause, he checks Kurt’s reflection in the rear-view mirror and says, casually, “Sam’s gonna be so happy to see you.”  
  
Kurt hums at his side, and in the mirror, Finn sees his lips twitch, tellingly. They share a tiny look, and Kurt pretends to be surprised by what he’s said - raises his eyebrows up and asks,  “Is that so?”  
  
Finn breaks into a grin and laughs.

  


-

When they get to the house, Sam is on a lawn-chair in the front yard with with the empty one Finn was occupying an hour ago next to him covered in the few hundred university pamphlets he asked Miss Pillsbury for yesterday. He waves when he spots the car and beams when he spots who’s inside, three or four pamphlets on schools in Kentucky Finn knows he doesn’t want to go to falling out of his lap when he stands up, waving a hand over his head at Kurt in the passenger seat.

Kurt waves back the funny, fluttery-fingers way he does. Then he turns back around to look at Finn, abruptly, his mouth parted like he wants to say something, eyes wide and a little scared. He blinks at Finn, over and over, opens and closes his mouth, over and over.

Finn pushes on his shoulder. “What are you waiting for? Go already,” he insists.

After a deep breath, Kurt does.

-

They sit out in the garden most of the day. When Finn hauled Kurt’s suitcase inside, Burt had looked up from his newspaper to give it a questioning look. He’d told him Kurt was home for a week or two, and then, “He’s sitting in the yard with Sam,” which had made mom dart in from the kitchen to peek out of the curtains at them and Burt to look up from his newspaper at random intervals to give the window a menacing look.

Finn does his best not to intrude all day, but he’s cornered in the kitchen when they decide to come back inside, the sun already starting to set. He can see the orange stripes falling through the blinds and painting themselves across Sam’s back, making his hair look sunny in patches. Finn’s too big and too awkward to walk through without being noticed - these big, awkward legs; this big, awkward heart that loves Kurt and Sam both a _lot_ , that stutters at how they stand so close from the crack in the door Finn’s too nosy to stop watching them through. He sees them from the side, just a few steps away.

“I think I’m gonna miss living here,” Sam is saying, softly. He presses his lips together and reaches out, hesitatingly, touches his hand to where Finn’s mostly sure Kurt’s heart sits. If it’s odd of him to do, Kurt doesn’t seem to care.

He stares up into Sam’s face, and Finn’s seen how Kurt’s looked at so many boys - himself, for example, or Blaine, or boyfriends from New York - and it was the same, every time, every boy. This is a special look. This is all for Sam alone to have. “I do, sometimes,” Kurt admits, lowly. His hand reaches up and spreads over Sam’s, over his heart. “Lima isn’t home, for me, but some of the people - they really are.”

Sam’s lips curve. He leans lower, and their foreheads are touching and Finn thinks that all the years Sam and Kurt weren’t together, all the years they spent homesick and alone were leading to this moment. Finn thinks of kissing Rachel at an airport terminal and the way his heart surged when he held her hand all the way there and it’s strange to see that feeling she gives him standing right in front of him, in the shape of two people he can only at this point think of as his brothers.

He can’t see it when they kiss. He sees Sam’s free hand slide down Kurt’s arm to catch in his hand, and squeeze, and then he turns away and thinks he’s seen enough, already, more than either of them would have wanted him to. He should feel guilty or rude but instead it’s this odd relief, like a knot pushed out of his back, like Sam leaving for school doesn’t have to mean Sam leaving forever; that not seeing Rachel on her birthday wouldn’t be the end of them, not at all. It’s like a confirmation.

He sits there, kind of dazed and really, unbelievably tired on both of their behalves, slumped against the door on the cold kitchen tiles even a while after he knows they’ve gone. He doesn’t want them to know that he was there the whole time, not _ever_.

“Took you guys a while,” he mutters to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [reinvent-amour](reinvent-amour.tumblr.com) for the 2011 Canoe Christmas.


End file.
